Assisted Suicide Essay

The issue of Physician-Assisted Suicide is highly controversial, and that makes it difficult to draw a line between when it is morally right or wrong to engage in Physician-Assisted Suicide. The issue will precipitate the debate for years to come due to various moral and immoral concerns of many different people. James Rachels poses the Equivalent Thesis argument that I support. I believe that active euthanasia is not different from passive euthanasia when there is no alternate way to reduce the patient’s pain. Rachel says that when there is a way to reduce person’s suffering for a number of days one should choose active euthanasia. Rachel claims that there is no ethical difference between killing and letting die. A patient outcome is the same whether illegally or legally killed, and they all end up the dead. Physicians allow patients to die where the reasons for keeping people alive do not apply. Rachel state that people should advocate active euthanasia since it is more humane since it does permit painless death. The moral argument of PAS centers on self-determination where a person has the prerogative of deciding for himself on what happens to the body. Self-determination gives individual power control and ultimate responsibility for their lives.
John D. Arras pursues a vision of an equal and decent society that observes all the moral rights of humanity. He is a keen academician with various moral virtues to make the correct judgment. Arras objects PAS using a religious rationale that states that it is immoral to implement such a policy in the society. According to the scholar, implementing such a policy would result in a loss of opportunity for the elderly who vulnerable. Permitting terminal ill to choose an easy death will subvert care of the ill, pain management, and gerontology. Any society that removes moral and legal framework to kill terminal ill patients will improve their conditions. The author strongly objects on the establishment of PAS as a social policy.